2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Branded Content is slowly becoming a hot topic in the industry in Egypt. However, a few clients are actually taking initiative. Our branded content submitted in this entry is a bit different due to its nature and due to the way it was utilized across TV channels. TV stations in Egypt never have anything going on screen except for channel-related content (i.e. logo, new trackers, etc.). Our content was integrated and imposed in a way on screen that made it a media first in Egypt. Furthermore, our messages were integrated in the actual content of major talk shows.

Results

Our Objective was reduce the electricity consumption in Egypt by 4% annually totaling to 20% by 2019 (in 5 years from the launch of the campaign); given that the annual growth in electricity consumption is 6% annually for the past 10 years – according to the “Egyptian Electricity Observatory Report, Dec 2013”, and create a Top-Of-Mind awareness around the subject of energy conservation; and engage all stakeholders behind the initiative. The allocated budget was limited and a fraction of the budget such a campaign dictates. It was a time of political turmoil and people weren’t going to listen to the government. So we shifted our mindset into one that paves the way for the actual ATL campaign and bypass these challenges in smart and cost-effective ways. We believed that the way forward was not a typical ATL campaign because, alone, it is not sufficient to change behavior. We treated it as a social movement. Our first achievement was turning media into partners, equally part of the initiative as much as the ministries and oil companies are. Using our media connections, we arranged meetings with the channel owners, strategists, programmers and TV show hosts to have them adopt the cause in all their content. And they did and the results were great! Talk show hosts on all major stations adopted the topic and became the talk of the town. It was also integrated in some scripted shows, and regular interviews were conducted with business owners and government officials who were proactive in energy consumption reduction. One of our biggest achievements was introducing a new element to the to TV channels. They adopted our power meter, a real time indicator of the power consumption levels that warned people when it was in the red zone, and actually caused immediate reduction in consumption.

The audience was drawn to the content in a way that is actually measurable. Our realtime energy consumption meter imposed on screen resulted in IMMEDIATE reduction in consumption when it entered in the red zone indicating high consumption levels. Furthermore, the integration of our messages in talk shows resulted in the campaign becoming talk of town as evident in the social media listening reports we conducted.

I. We reached 3.72% reduction in the energy consumption in just 3 months. N.B The consumption growth rate had been 6% anually for the past ten years. Source: The Egyptian Electricity Observatory Report July 2014 We reached 18% decrease in AC usage in June 2014 versus same period in 2013. Source: The Egyptian Electricity Observatory Report July 2014 The movement initiative has been adopted across 11 stations, 38 different programs on TV and radio, with a total of 1,420 free minutes of 1st runs, not taking into consideration that the majority of the shows on TV are having at least one rerun, equaling to a total of 2.28 million US dollars of free exposure. Source: IPSOS STAT / Statex Jan - July 2014